Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
by Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to 11.9 'O Brother Where Art Thou' - "The physics in the remote realms of hell are different than in The Cage. Here, Sam can fight back." As Sam faces off against the universe's greatest enemy, Dean and Castiel rush to save him, hoping they're not too late. Dark, angsty, supsense. Warnings for violence, gore and self harm.


Ack! I was desperate to write a tag for 'O Brother Where Art Thou' but didn't come up with a decent idea until Thursday and then it took on a life of its own. I have been writing my fingers numb and editing 'til my eyes blur to get this up before "Supernatural" returns tomorrow! I wanted to something action-packed and incredibly dark, and I think I've done it. Possible Trigger Warnings: Show-Level Graphic Violence and Self-Harm. As always, let me know what you think!

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 **Slow Dancing In A Burning Room**

The terror is as real as Lucifer, a living breathing thing that puts a quiver in his limbs, pressure in is bladder and sick rushing up throat in a geyser of bile. He crams himself into the corner of the cage as Lucifer preens about like a peacock. Petrified, Sam attempts to thread an arm through the bars. As soon as his fingertips breech the plane beyond the bars—some morose version of freedom since its still far-flung hell—a tendril of consecrated fire unravels from the thick flames, singeing them as the cage rocks and shakes, its metallic seams clattering.

The supernatural securities that were supposed to keep him safe have now trapped him in side.

Crying out, Sam draws back smoking, blistered digits. He is well and truly screwed. Suddenly, Lucifer grins from the center of the cage as he advances. His enormous wings on full display, gnarled with blade-like feathers that drip sulfurous slime, flutter restlessly against the cramped confines of the cage.

They're both acting on centuries of muscle memory now. Lucifer advances and intimidates. He submits, making himself small to avoid torture. Sam reflexively whispers an Enochian protection rite he'd researched the day before to convince himself that he'd survive.

Energy surges out of Sam—an ethereal glinting that wobbles the air—and blooms up and around him like an umbrella. A barrier of protection.

He gapes at the glimmering dome of magic that's shut out a righteous angel. They stare each other down between the glass-like barrier. In an abrupt explosion of outrage, his vessel's face peels away with the squelching of flesh and a cleaving of bone, revealing Lucifer's true and tremendous being. It's simultaneously witheringly frightening and hauntingly captivating, too awesome to comprehend.

Sam lets out a relieved little squeak, trying to figure this out. He's still corporeal—he knows because his heart is stampeding within his chest and each desperate breath sucks frigid streams of sulfur and brimstone into his lungs. And maybe that's why it's different than before.

The physics in the remote realms of hell are different than in The Cage. Here, Sam can fight back.

Lucifer rails against the barrier with all four of his wings. Each strike against it ripples through Sam as a stunning shockwave of pain, but it's bearable and almost encouraging. He just has to hold out for Dean. It's a feat of sheer insanity to tamp down the blinding terror, but he needs to conserve energy. Sam sits and concentrates on nothing but the rite. Not the cage or the creator of evil on the other side.

"Let me in, Sam."

Sam draws in a cleansing breath, and regards Lucifer with brittle defiance and utters, "No" with tremulous but unwavering certainty.

Lucifer scratches a nail against the barrier, and Sam flinches at the stinging trail curling down his back. "You and I both know you can't keep that up forever." His smile was treacherous and spiked. "And we've got nothin' but time."

-SPN-

The continuous exertion of the protective barrier is killing him. There's no sky or stars, but the ebb and flow of hell-time is the same. It's been nearly a year, give or take, and Sam is like an orchid wilting in the desert sun, drooping and water-starved. Lucifer has abandoned his assault on the barricade to waltz around the cage, basking in the deviousness that brought him companionship.

Sam claws his neck maniacally. His skin crawls with creeping itch that worsens with each passing day. He's covered in a webbing of angry welts, and the puckering of hives. He needs a distraction. He clears his dry throat to ask, "Where's Adam?"

Lucifer has since returned to his vessel's face. Those human lips upturn into a sinister smile; those muddy blue eyes bat flirtatiously. He flutters his fingers in the air. "Young Adam is in the ether now. Michael," the lips twist into a snarl, "that belly-to-the-ground beast here somewhere. Scurrying around like the rat that he is."

Sam scans the dark corners of the cage. Michael liked to turn himself into different creatures and pick fights with Lucifer. Sam knew the theatricality was to distract Lucifer from him.

"I heard you hit the ground running since you've were sprung. Leviathans. Trying to close the gates of hell. The Mark of Cain. And now you've gone pre-biblical. Sammy, I'm impressed."

Sam moves to reply, but coughs instead, crackling and wet. The barrier flickers to static while he hacks and chokes, only keeping himself upright with a hand braced against the floor. The force it takes to regain control is akin to dead-lifting the Impala, but the borders seals clean before Lucifer can exploit them. Sam lets his head thunk back against the cage as and bites his lip. There's something moist and slippery in his palm, too sticky to be blood. Refusing the reveal even more vulnerability, Sam ignores it.

 _Dean, please, hurry._

He scratches his arm until it bleeds.

Lucifer drapes himself against the barrier like a lounge singer on a piano, because he already knows. "Hell, it's downright _torture_ on the body. It'll destroy you faster than I ever will." His face softens into some bizarre reproduction of sympathy. "Don't worry. I'm not asking you to come out your little bubble. You are worth the wait. I just don't like seeing you suffer like this. Not when I can stop it," he leans a chin on his palm. "And I know you're trying to run out the clock until Dean comes in and saves the day. The white knight galloping through hell on his angelic steed." Lucifer chuckles like he knows a secret. "We've done this dance before, you and I, and I know you'll just end up heartbroken. We both know he's bound to _that thing_ like a dog on a leash."

Sam musters the strength to lift his pounding head. "What?"

Lucifer always takes pleasure in eviscerating with the truth. The Chesire grin makes Sam lightheaded with dread.

"Big brother didn't tell you? Why would he? You're only his annoying little brother, a curse on the house of Winchester. You've done about as much good for your family as I have for mine," Lucifer swoops as close as he can to savor Sam's pain. "As a bearer of the great lock, he will forever be tied to The Darkness. He cannot harm one hair on her hot little head no matter how much he wants to."

Outrage liberates him from the weakness and the constant pain. The barrier wobbles to a new bulbous shape to adjust to Sam's height as he rises. "I don't believe you," he seethes.

But even as he says it, he flashes back to Dean's shady, defensive disposition after the horribly botched mission to kill Amara. The one that left him with a sprained back, a dislocated elbow and a concussion. The one Dean insisted on, like he had something to prove.

"It all makes sense now, doesn't it? The lies, the deceit, the betrayal of your…" his head tilts, gaze boring into Sam, scanning his thoughts, " _Stone Number One_."

Sam's heart is skittering and it's still unable to keep up with litany of half-formed thoughts ping-ponging in his mind.

Because he strolled right back into his worst nightmare without knowing that Dean could never kill The Darkness.

"He's not coming for you. It's already been years. And why should he? _You left him in Purgatory_."

Desolation smothers the quick-burn of rage. Tears slip down his cheeks and he knees tremble before dumping him back on the ground.

"Let me in, Sammy. You're hurting, and I can take that away. You know I can." Lucifer's breath fogs up the barrier and he draws a filligried heart in the fog. "You remember what it's like, how we fit together. It's simple; it's _symbiotic_. You let me borrow that body of yours, and I'll walk out of here. And then you're done. It'll be a win-win for two misunderstood little brothers who have always lose. It'll be quick and clean, and you can rest. I know how tired you are."

Sam boxes in his ears and brings his knees to his chest. For an instant, he contemplates letting Lucifer in. The power of the greatest villain in the world is many things, and intoxicating is one of them.

And if Dean can be tethered to a Big Bad, why shouldn't he?

His eyes flicker to Lucifer's face, primed in innocence and sparkling with wicked hope.

"No," he whispers before he folds.

It's worth it to see the smug expression on Lucifer's face melt into dumbfounded shock. It's worth the jolting pain when Lucifer launches himself at the barrier, punching at it with fists forged of fire.

It's worth it even though Sam each blow tears through Sam like a swing of machete.

Maybe he was always meant to die in a cage at the hands of evil, but this last stand will be more than Sam whimpering as he's dismembered and violated in ways that don't even exist on earth.

He'd barely makes it to his feet before Lucifer's malignant grace finally shatters the barrier. It reverberates through him with the gentility of a lightning strike. There's vicious crunching in Sam's head, just behind his eyes, and his blood begins drips from his nostrils and one eye. Half-blind, Sam staggers away, shaking the bars in panicked desperation, not caring what part of him gets scorched by the cage's supernatural security.

The rising flames paint Lucifer's attacking form in ghastly radiance. "Remember when you were here, curled and weeping, holding the bits of yourself together, begging for mercy? You following the scent, answering my prayers had finally made you worthy of it, but you always have to do things the hard way. You always have to be noble and righteous. And that will always land you here!"

The devil's breath is a rancid tickle on the back of his neck. The unnatural cold of hell is leeching into his bones, gumming up his mind. Sam doesn't even know if it'll work—it never did in The Cage—but he whips around, swaying dangerously, and throws a punch that contains all of the rage and vengeance and pain he endured for two centuries. Trying to coldclock the devil is the most ridiculous act in the universe, but all he has are his fists and Winchester-grade nerve.

Sam is stunned when the blow sends Lucifer reeling back, clutching his jaw.

Sam doesn't take a second to celebrate. He recites an Enochian spell and a hallowed blade materializes in his hand. And for a glimmer of an instant, the devil is crestfallen.

The ensuing battle between the human hunter and the Morning Star is like that of a duel between an assassin and a planet. It's calamitous, knocking the cage off-kilter. A corner slides into holy fire, and is engulfed. There's flashes of tainted grace , the visceral squick of torn flesh and a flurry of cutting feathers. It ends quickly and ruthlessly. Sam managed to lop off the tip of a wing, but the oil sluicing down he feathers splashes in face and neck, searing his skin like acid. Lucifer merely plucks the blade out from Sam's grasp, crumbling it to dust before he slams his grace-powered fist in Sam's face so mightily it feels irrevocably dented, and something short-circuits in his head. There's a stunning lack of sensation, a deadness of muscles. Barely conscious, Sam poised to crumple to the cage floor, splayed out and defenseless, but Lucifer snags Sam's soiled shirt front, and reels him in.

"My plan was never to hurt you, but you struck the first blow. Just remember that you brought all of this on yourself."

Sam had thought he'd endured everything a human could—broken bones, death of his entire family, centuries of torture. Pain always hurt, but it either changed or abated.

Until Lucifer plunges his hand in Sam's chest.

The sound of it is quite unique—a muffled popping of a balloon or the beating of raw meat. Sensation descends a beat later, and it is tremendous and unyielding. Holyfire in his blood and nitrogen in bones. He burns from the inside, but is paralyzed as Lucifer gropes his lungs and tangles his intestine.

His head falls forward onto Lucifer's shoulder while his arms wobble at his sides. He can't breathe. He can't see. He can't scream. Nothing exists but the excruciating misery of being filleted from the inside out.

Sam is swaying and spinning as he's trapped in his gruesome slow dance with the devil. Cold lips press to his ear to sigh, "Oh how I've missed being inside you."

Lucifer threads Sam's of his arms over his shoulder. "I can't damage the goods, but your soul, I can rail on that as much as I want. I just need to find it. Don't worry, kiddo, I won't let you die."

Lucifer continues his search, forked tongue curling out of his mouth in concentration. "Seems like things have been rearranged. You've been cheating on me with other angels...an another demon? You kinky bastard.

Sam can only manage a gurgling wheeze as Lucifer explores his innards for his soul. There's an internal burst of cool eclipsing pain that's so appalling he doesn't know how he's still alive. " _Eureka_."

They're still spinning and Sam's eyes are leaking more than just blood. "Relax, Sammy. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

Lucifer's voice is different An octave lower with a gravel-and-charisma lilt that Sam doesn't need functioning eyes to recognize. It's Dean.

Sam lifts his head. He's kneeling the floor of the catina, a stone-faced Dean leering at him with Death's scythe firmly in hand. Sam blinks the tears out of his eyes. The edges of the cantina are wilted and curled like an old photograph, but he can't worry about that now, Dean's life is all matters. Sam's going to save him this time.

He offers Dean a soft, loving smile as he places the photographs on the ground, hoping he'll remember the love captured in them and can recover himself through the onslaught of evil. Dean looks at them, regards Sam with indifference and drives the scythe into Sam's chest. Sam slumps to the floor, voicelessly begging his big brother, his protector and best friend, for help.

Dean simply steps back as not to get blood on his boots and watches him die, lips curled in a sick smile.

The catina dissolves and the bars of the cage clatter into place, imprisoning him again.

The violating hand is still there.

"Say yes, Sam, and this will end. I don't like hurting you."

He's scooping out parts of Sam and stuffing him with hate and evil and malice. Something viscous and nasty oozes from his lips, drowning him, but Sam discovers you don't have to be able to speak to say no.

"So be it."

He freefalls from one hallucination to the next—Jessica slitting his throat as he studies for the LSATs; his mother aborting him after finding out she was pregnant; Dean executing him learning Sam never looked for him in Purgatory; Good Charlie killing him because of the evil in his veins; Castiel smiting him on site; Jodi letting her zombie son devour him slowly and agonizingly.

It's an endless, maddening assault that lays waste to Sam's sanity.

It takes a dozen macabre vignettes before Sam understands that they only end because he actually dies, but Lucifer's invading hand pumps his heart and flicks his lungs back to life. He's nothing more than a hand-puppet, and Sam doesn't know how this is any better than possession.

When the cage bleed back into his wrecked vision, Sam's a weeping, drooling mess, still puddled against Lucifer. "Look at me, Sam."

His head is lifted. Dean's face swims into view. It's not a supernatural recreation—a cheap fabrication of an original masterpiece—it's the authentic face, down the freckles sprinkled across his nose, the healing scar from their last hunt and the botched fade from the hungover barber in Kansas City.

Sam wets himself.

Lucifer hovers behind Dean, both hands behind his back. "It was Dean all along," he says. He looks as haunted and grief-stricken as Sam. He glances down to see Dean's arm obscenely sunk into Sam's chest, face quivering with hate. "Pulling levers and manipulating you. You're so blinded by fraternal devotion that you don't even see it. You've always his burden and his pawn. You deserve the power to control the game. I can give you that and so much more. Whaddaya say, Sam?"

Dean twists an internal knob that cranks up the pain so high that Sam jaw locks and two teeth splinter. And for the first time in centuries, Sam doesn't say no.

Behind them, Lucifer claps and shimmies like a showgirl. Dean looks at Sam in disgust, but the offending hand is removed. It's Lucifer, not Dean who catches him and gingerly arranges against the side of the cage.

His mouth tastes of sulfur and shame but Lucifer wipes it clean. "I'll let you think about it."

Except all Sam can focus on is that he's died a thousand times, suffered for lifetimes and none of it has meant anything. Hell rages around him, never-ending and ominous. Every strobe of light is another soul damned to eternity. The onslaught hasn't stopped since he arrived—a meteor shower of torment. Why is he bothering to fight? What good has he done?

Sam opens his mouth and sludge slides out, curving over his chin. He manages a wet, broken hum as he tries to remember how to work his tongue and form words.

Just as he's about to relent, something slithers against his hip. Sam startles, jarring the destroyed pieces of his soul. His working eye tracks the movement. It's not Lucifer, but a large leech-like creature with stitched-shut eyes and no mouth. The thing touches Sam, and for an instant, Sam's warm.

 _Michael._

It slithers up a bar and circles around a section of the cage. Sam looks at Lucifer, who's doing yoga near the fire-engulfed corner. Dean is still there, scowling. He has to blink tears and grit from his eyes and squint to see it, but there's faint smear of ash on the bars, about four inches apart.

Lucifer was able to reach out to Sam because the cage was broken, and this has to be the source. Sam pets the strange beast with selfish gratitude, and throws a singed arm up. The curled fingers hook over a bar on the way down. Forcing his the scorched digits to grip, he drags himself closer, and breaks off the edge of the section of bar. Sam's spirit is already bowed. Another round will shatter him completely. It's been years now, and no one is fighting for him. No one is coming.

"They're celebratin' Sammy. It's all party hats and strippers now that you're gone." Dean growls.

The piece of the cage is small with a bluntly jagged end. Sam wields it like a blade. There's no hesitation as Sam drives it into his thigh until there's a flash of bright red blood from his femoral artery. Maybe his ravaged nerves have long since been destroyed, but he barely feels the pain, only the headrush as blood gushes from his femoral artery.

Dean vanishes. Lucifer's face is suddenly hovering over his like a phantom. But Sam's heart is lurching in his chest and blood puddles beneath his leg, and freedom is a few torturous moments away.

His head bangs against the bars as Lucifer shakes him, howling and irate.

Gail winds howl through the cage as the protective hellfire is extinguished.

Through the tendrils of smoke and gallows of hell, Sam is free.

 **-SPN-**

Dean throws up when he learns that Sam was trapped some remote cave of hell with Lucifer.

And he hasn't stopped shaking since.

One day on earth is 121 in hell.

It's been a week topside; 847 below. Almost two and a half years. How is his little brother older than him by centuries?

Dean reflexively covers his mouth, wondering if he'll be sick again. The nefarious stench of hell had nearly done it, but the knowledge just might. Instead he focuses his wrath on Rowena, who'd abandoned Sam in the universe's backdoor and took Dean four days (to Sam's 485) to track down.

Gone is the glamorous super-witch with the women's magazine make-up and velvet gowns. She's a limp-haired sniveling mess, and the only colors on her face are the crimson scratches from branches as she fled from a pursuing Dean and purpling bruises from his knuckles when he finally pinned her down. The only accessories she has now are the cuffs encircling her wrists, the collar around her neck and the chain that connects them both.

Rowena's all out of snarky comments and disobedience. She merely walks, increasing speed when he commands it.

They reach a deeper levels of hell are paved with the slick remnants of ruined souls of the eroding ivory faces of skulls. Their movements make no sound, and even their human voices are strangled by evil. The gravity is strange too, a violent hand pressing him down or a wild propulsion trying to launch him off his feet. It would be darker than pitch without the special sulfurous torches Crowley gave them.

The tunnel they've trarversed for eleven hours (to Sam's 55.6 days) finally yawns into a skyless to the remote plane Crowley spoke of. The fire surrounding the cage flares blindingly his dark-adjusted eyes.

When he can see again, Dean's stomach plummets in stricken horror.

The cage stands on the precipice of a cliff, half of it on fire, that overlooks the chains and gears of the darkest levels of the pit, where even hellfire won't burn. The depths Dean tortured his way out of.

He sprints to rest of the way. Rowena can keep up or be dragged by her leash. When he reaches the altar, he chains Rowena to the altar, and cocks his gun. "Now." He commands. His voice that pings off the rocks and kickstarts a crescendo of cries that are ravaged with glorious agony, like that of the souls Dean flayed until there was nothing left by grit and sulfur.

Being here is bringing _him_ back, and Dean doesn't fight it. He is useful.

Rowena works frantically, pouring powders and lighting candles. Dean jabs the barrel against the back of her head. "Screw this up, and you'll end up in that cage with Him."

"Please, I canno' work with a gun to me head," Rowena falls to her knees. "Or do ya want to have a go at me—a helpless woman—again?" Dean pointedly doesn't look at the fingers her broke when Rowena was in stall mode, playing fast and loose with Sam's time. He has plans to hate himself later.

Castiel confiscates the weapon and drags him away as Dean growls, "Ain't been helpless a day in your life, bitch. Work."

The angel's vivid blue eyes are the only thing of color or beauty here.

The consecrated blaze surrounding the cage are nearly twelve-feet high, a prison within a prison. In the negative space between the flames, he sees two shadowed figures. One hovering above another that's a heap in a near corner. He knows which one is Sam.

Sam always carefully spoke around his time in the cage, and they both knew why. The reality of it is far more depraved than even he could imagine. How had Sam survived this _for centuries_?

Rowena intones behind him. The sound of her voice only irritates his wrath. He never needed The Mark to feel extraordinary bloodlust. The rage it unleashed was always a secret part of him, all snakeoil and malice. The Mark just gave it a voice. It's crooning to him now, enticing him to gut Rowena where she stands, but even that would be too merciful.

Castiel stands by Dean's side near the edge of the stairs. A cant of the head reveals Castiel's splayed wings. He's comforted by the glossy black feathers speckled with gold that arch up and over him protectively.

"When the fire's out, the holding cage will descend. I will have mere moments to free Sam through the breech. If we do not make it, let Rowena live until she leads you topside..." he tucks the gun in his waistband, the one with angel-blade bullets "...I will see to it that Sam doesn't suffer."

"Just get out," Dean insists, "don't worry about me." Pain will end here no matter what. "Cas...man, than-"

A final, hoarse shout from Rowena sends wind funnels around the cage, whirling gratitude from his mouth and the oxygen out of Dean's lungs. The inferno bends and spits embers before it's smothered completely. Castiel swoops forward in a magnificent thumping of wings and roar of grace. Dean dashes an arm over his face to cover his eyes against the toxic smoke and the blinding divine light.

A marrow-curdling scream splits the air, and Dean is blasted backwards; he's in flight in enough to see the boots of his flailing legs and to trying to snag the nearby juts of brimstone that only crumbles in his hands. He lands in a bone-bending heap, dazed by pain. With no sun, up and down are one and the same. But then the stone beneath him quakes and rumbles—the cage is being sucked back to unreachable depths.

Dean scrambles to his feet as the gusts wane to a slight breeze, Sam's name roaring from his throat. Dean waves at the smoky clouds that sting his eyes and muddles his vision, leaving him stumbling half-blind and fearing the worst. He finds nothing but a massive crater where the temporary cage once was. "No! No! No!"

Finally, the wind dies and plumes of smoke twist away to reveal a rumpled bundle of angelic wings.

And two giant feet sticking out of the plumage. A sob escapes his throat as he sprints forward. Castiel unfurls his wings as Dean skids to his knees.

The tableau will forever been emblazoned in his mind, and will be fodder for nightmares both sleeping and waking. His baby brother's face is deforming with swelling, blood crusting beneath in nose and eyes. All exposed skin is covered in welts and weeping ruts. His lips are stained black from sludge that dribbles from his mouth. His fingers of both hands are dotted with stomach-turning burns and oozing blisters. Sam's entire body labors through a piteous imitation of breathing.

It's the ugliest miracle he's ever gotten.

And it's fading. Blood slicks his palm and has already pooled on the rocky ground beneath bent right thigh. Red like a rose. _Arterial_. Dean tears his jeans and gags at the jagged hole in his thigh.

Sam is bleeding out.

Heartsick, Dean grinds the heel of his hand against the ugly, obviously self-inflicted wound, to staunch the bleeding as much as he can. Sam doesn't even flinch.

"Cas, can you heal him?"

Castiel, face marred with dirt and ash and a few fetid feathers stuck into his singed coat, shakes his head. "My recovered grace is volatile at these depths. We must get him topside."

Dean doesn't let himself worry if Sam will survive the trip.

With one hand, he snags the belt of Castiel's trenchcoat, and threads it around Sam's thigh, cinching it tight just above the wound. His belt follows just below. "Take him and haul ass. I'll find my own way out."

Castiel's resolve is Winchester-grade. "I will not abandon you in his wretched place."

Dean doesn't bother to glance back at Rowena's, who's still chained to the altar. Instead, he gathers up his gasping, shocky little brother as Castiel's surrounds them both.

Angel teleportation is like to skydiving through a tornado. Zooming through different planes of existence smash organs against the ribcage and vibrates brain the skull. The discomfort is over quicker than it begins, and Dean keels over, horking out hell as he gobbles up air that smells of rain and grass and cigarette smoke.

Sam arches and trembles beneath him. His chest rises draggily, dark mouth gaping for air, but the resulting exhale is a moist, faint whistle, the last whirrings of a dying machine. Sam doesn't take another breath.

"CAS!"

But Castiel is already laying hands on Sam at heart and head. His determined expressions creases with sadness. "Oh, Sam. You did not deserve this."

He's weary from the battle, and his depleted powers kick on and off like an old lawmower. Sam jerks like he's being defibrilllated, but he's still not breathing.

Dean completely loses it when his little brother's eyes slide open to unseeing slits.

Castiel chants mightily in Enochian, face flushing red and muscles cording. Dean bows his head and grabs Sam's hand. He can't manage words, but "please" glints in his mind like a neon sign. Divine light hums through the rainy dusk, bleeding through Dean's eyelids.

When Castiel finishes, he slumps to the grass in pure exhaustion. The results are not what he expects. Sam doesn't sputter to life; he doesn't even move. All visible wounds and that mysterious crap he was choking on is gone, but he's still worryingly gray, filthy and unconscious.

"Did…did it work?" Dean almost can't bear the answer.

Castiel loosens his ties and unbuttons his collar with tremulous hands. "I can only fix the body. I mended physical ailments, even his body's reaction to the extraordinary strains of hell. I cannot fix the damage to the soul. We know how marred it already was," he says morosely. "I am awed that he's even alive. But he's Sam."

"Yeah," Dean sweeps back Sam's stringy hair and shakes his head fondly, "he is."

They undress Sam in the rain and heft him into the Impala's backseat. While Castiel drives them back to the bunker, Dean cleans him up the best he can with wet wipes and a bottle of water. Then he bundles him in tw blankets and one trenchcoat. Dean cradles him during the drive, rubbing up and down his arms to try to warm him up. He positions Sam so his nose is pressed to the crook of Dean's neck, and track his breathing. Even though he's been healed, Sam's breathing is weak and far too slow, heartrate isn't much better. He's freezing, too, but his body isn't shivering to generate heat. Sam is merely existing, and in the moment, Dean's too grateful and too scared to hope for anything more.

" I'm so sorry. Just keep doing what you're doin'. I'm here." Dean wonders all the way back to the bunker if that will be enough.

A warm bath restores color to Sam's cheeks.

An electric blanket brings his temperature up.

An IV keeps him hydrated.

Drugs relieve any pain.

Five lamps from other rooms brighten the room-the purposeful antithesis of the far-flung realm of hell.

And then he prepared himself for the ensuing fog of panic, an emotional purgatory that was worse than the violent abyss Dean had fought in for a year. Dean had done this too many times before, propped himself up with panic and booze, sunk into a guilt-ridden what-ifs, and why-didn't-Is. Dean wouldn't allow himself the luxury of self-flagellation or pity or alcohol. This is about Sam. This is about an infant born three weeks early, and fit in the crook between John Winchester's elbow and wrist but somehow grew to be 6'5''. This is about a little boy who grew up homeless with a grief-ridden, vengeance-obsessed father and somehow managed to be the most selfless, kindhearted, bravest man Dean had ever met. This is about the student who averaged at least 5 different schools a year, studied by flashlight or in the back of a darkened car and became a national merit school.

This is about a soul primed and poisoned for evil and omitting the brightest light in spite of it all.

Dean is grateful for every sign of life.

Hell clings to his skin, a prickling dusting of evil that chafes and stings with every movement—a thousand microscopic barbs. Tearing himself from Sam's side, he takes the world's fastest shower in water a few degrees hotter than he can stand, scratching and scrubbing himself a brush meant to for the Impala's tires. He now knows why Sam was covered in bloody welts.

Red-skinned and dizzy from the heat, Dean brews a pot of coffee and only adds one conservative belt of whiskey.

It's only been a few hours since they've returned topside. Dean was only down there for a little more than a half-day, and there's an ache simmering in his joints and baking at his eyes. He could sleep for a week, and still be exhausted. He expects Sam to be out for at least a day.

But Sam is never one to do what's expected of him. It's why Dean's only half-surprised to find his brother, who was thoroughly unconscious and still worryingly cold not twenty minutes ago, curled on his side, face screwed up as he breaks through the final layers of unconsciousness.

Coffee sloshes over the brim of his cup as Dean rushes to his brother's side. He's charged with relief, but reins in it, folding the urge to shout and tackle into an even-keeled whisper and a cautious hover. "Sammy. You're out, buddy. You're in your own super-nerdy room in our very own batcave. Just relax, take a minute to get your bearings." Dean kneels on the bed, bracing an arm over his brother to keep him from sliding off. The mattress squeaks as Sam continues to writhe on the bed, making raw sounds of distress. His eyes are barely open, and Dean can't be sure how much he's absorbing.

"Sammy, can you talk to me? Can you tell me what's hurting you? Come on, little brother, don't leave me hangin'." Dean's voice isn't working, so Dean adds tactile comfort—his hand gently folding over Sam's shoulder to help ground him. But it only detonates a little brother armed with three new years of hellacious trauma.

Sam's eyes flare open, and when they settle on Dean, terror is added to the golden-blue, bloodshot mix. Dean jerks in fear as a stricken Sam pales, screams and shimmies backward. He hits the headboard and tries to burrow through the wall.

Cursing, Dean immediately lifts his hands in the air and steps back. Fight or flight are ingrained human instincts and Sam's hell-haunted brain has obviously leaned towards the latter. "No touching, got it. Talk to me, Sammy, please. Just…"

A streak of efficient, blinding movement is the only warning gets Dean is knocked sideways, tumbling awkwardly into the nightstand, lamp falling askew, coffee cup shattering. Dean berates himself for going too fast, for spooking a traumatized Sam.

But as he tries to apologize, to be more patient, but the dewy-eyed trepidation on Sam's pale face transforms into something eerily dangerous. Dean has no instinct to be scared of his brother, hasn't in years, so it's heartbreakingly cruel blow when he's thrown into the stone wall of Sam's bedroom, when those big hands curl into fists.

Dean doesn't have time to assure Sam that he's no threat before he's pulled forward, and launched back into the wall again. Dean grunts when his head snaps back, cracking against the wall with a burst of stars. A jaw-cracking punch whips his head to the side and splits his cheek. Dean hadn't had the heart to fight back—to risk hurting Sam—before, but now he can't defend himself when he absolutely needs to. The most dangerous animal is a wounded one.

Sam is a mess—wild-eyed and white lipped and shuttering with a volatile mix of overwhelming fear and misdirected rage—but still just as lethal. "Sam," Dean shakes out, "stop. You're...out!"

"I can't do this again…you're not doing this to me again!" Sam's voice is ravaged.

The door is wide open. Dean shoves at Sam backwards into the bed, and bolts for it. If he can put some space between him and Sam, maybe it'll give him time to sort things out.

His brother's reactive speed belies the hours he spent unconscious and the years in the cage. Sam snatches the hood of Dean's sweatshirt and yanks him down to the floor in a merciless move, that empties Dean's diaphraghm and possibly breaks his tailbone. Training is abandoned as the two grapple on the floor. Dean deflects a sloppy punch, but not the elbow that crunches into his nose. The same big hands he held on the drive back to the bunker fold around his neck and clamp down like with a vicious pressure that would make a pitbull jealous.

Gobsmacked, it takes the unbearable pressure bulging his eyes and fledgling burn of his oxygen-starved lungs for Dean to abandon his worry of hurting Sam for Dean to actually be afraid of his brother killing him. Each release hold he tries gets sloppier and weaker as the fire in his chest grows and spreads. Dean knows that this murderous distrust is Lucifer's handiwork.

He can't draw in enough air so he mouths the words. "Sammy, please...don't. Not him." Dean's flailing hands fall slack and sliding off his brother's flex, corded arms, leadened and limp. And he seems more static than a purple-faced Sam.

As Dean's eyes slide shut, he hears a flapping of a trenchcoat, blearily sees two fingers pressed to Sam's forehead. Sam's eyes roll back an instead before he topples forward in an unchecked collapse. Castiel catches Sam to keep him from collapsing on Dean.

Nose bleeding, cheek swelling, Dean rolls to his side, coughing and spitting blood as Castiel lowers Sam to the floor "…he okay?" It hurts to talk.

Castiel nods. "I rendered him unconscious. You should have prayed before it got that bad." He produces handcuffs from the folds of his trenchcoat. "We need to lock him down."

Dean glares, rubbing his abused throat. "Absolutely not. After what he's been through I'd be more worried if he didn't try to kill somethin'."

Castiel expressions is bleak earnestness, and stubbornly claps a handcuff to Sam's wrist. "Sam may be more dangerous than even we know. We need to keep him contained until we do."

Dean lunges forward to stop him with a withering glare and a growl of warning. He pulls Sam's slackened and shackled hand from Casitel's grasp and checks his pulse. It's strong. At least the attack brought his vitals out of coma patient lows. "The last thing he needs is to wake up hogtied."

"There are wounds on his soul in addition to the previous scarring. They are more like…fingerprints. It is evidence of..." Castiel searches for words. "You would liken it to…brainwashing but through spiritual manipulation…hallucinations and torment applied directly to the soul to bend it to his will."

"You mean…he…"

"Lucifer couldn't inflict much pain for risk of killing him so he…"

" _Waterboarded his soul_." Dean doesn't even fight the tear that dribbles down his cheek as he stares at his unconscious little brother, whose stirring.

"This technique…Lucifer honed it in the pit. It's how the first demons were forged," Castiel confesses. "We can't keep him unconscious forever. Dean, you must do this just until we know."

"Know what?"

Castiel looks at Sam with reverence. "If it worked."

"Then we do it my way. No chains, no dungeon," Dean insists as he carefully fastens the handcuffs.

They carry Sam to one of the bunker's more bizarre rooms. Dean thinks it was used for observation after experimentation. It's completely circular with pristinely smooth walls. And it's also the only place in the entire compound that receives direct sunlight through a complicated series of tubes and mirrors. There's a high window and a perch from the infirmary where Dean surveils Sam without being noticed.

Gnawing on his knuckle as he panics and paces and pleads for explanation and freedom. It's only when he dissolves into broken sobs that descend into hyperventilation that Dean can't take it anymore. Castiel stands guard outside of the room as he enters. He left notes in taped to the plastered walls written in brightly colored markers because in hell, everything is starkly monochromatic, except blood and fire.

He ventures past "YOU ARE NOT IN THE CAGE" scrawled in big, blue caps, and tries to catch Sam's eyes.

They're swollen and bloodshot from crying. "Can you tell me who you are? Where you are?"

Sam's mussed, tangled hair trembles as he lowers his head. Silence yawns between them, charged with a strange emotional tension. "Fuck you, Dean."

"Hmm, now we're getting somewhere. Where are you?"

"Kansas. Bunker," Sam spits with malice and wipes his tear-stained face on his shoulder.

Dean kneels just out of range of Sam's stupidly long legs. "That's right, Sammy, we got you out of the cage. I'm so sorry you went through that again. I can't…you're a stronger man than me, that's for sure."

"Why did you do this to me?" He hiccups, face crumpling as he cries.

Dean moves forward. Castiel clucks behind him, shaking his head. He roots himself in place, crossing his arms over his chest.

"We just needed to make sure your head's on straight is all. Soon as you're cleared, I got some food and some damn good drugs with your name on it."

Sam grimaces, folding forward a bit. His bound hands clutch at his chest.

"You hurtin'?"

Sam nods, eyes closed.

"Just tell me why you when after me earlier and you're free. Did you think I was him?" Dean forces himself to say the name. "Lucifer."

His little brother lifts his head, expression inscrutable but somehow jarring. "I know exactly who you are."

The answer is chillingly pointed and feels loaded with double meaning.

" _I want to leave_ ," Sam says strongly.

"A deal is a deal." Dean steps forward, easing by "YOUR NAME IS SAM WINCHESTER" in orange, and slowly approaches Sam. His battered neck and face ache, and he hates that he feels the stirrings of fear around his own brother. Sam seems to be in the same boat. He stands in anticipation of being freed but sidles away from Dean as he approaches, tracking every nuance of movement. "Do you trust me, Sammy?"

Sam snorts nastily. His bound hands are white-capped fists. "Maybe you should answer a question before you these off."

Dean ignores him and unlocks one cuff, handing the key to Sam so he can finish. Sam instantly retreats to free himself.

"I'm an open book, Sammy. Ask whatever you want."

His jaw clenches before he sneers, "How's Amara?" with a grisly feigned innocence.

Dean is instantly sweating. Panic bleeding out his pores. "T-the angels smited her. If she's ain't dust, she's definitely won't be gobblin' up souls anytime soon."

"And if she wasn't, if she were here what would you do?"

"It's a no-brainer, Sammy. I'd kill her."

And Sam is in his face once more, not touching or hitting but confronting with a ferocity that's somehow more frightening than violence. "You're lying! You've been lying. You lay into me for keeping secrets about being infected at the hospital or trying to save you from the damned Mark that _you asked for_ all while you're telling me lies."

Dean sputters in search for anything that could placate or comfort Sam.

Castiel appears in the doorway and Sam backs up, swaying a little. Dean doesn't even know how he's on his feet.

"It's not like that…you're confused."

"Who wouldn't be when you drag me on hunts that could have gotten me killed and the freakin' devil tells me the truth."

"Bad guys lying is pretty much status quo. Sammy, I didn't believe her. Why would I? She's a magic, soul-chugging monster that was a baby three freakin' weeks ago."

"Where were you? When I called? Where the hell were you? Because I know where I was." Sam staggers back, rubbing his chest.

Dean rubs his forehead. "I-I…Amara beamed me somewhere. I was by a lake. She tried to kill me."

"But she couldn't," Sam supplies with indifference.

"No. She has this hold on me. It's like Jedi mind control on steroids."

"BECAUSE YOU ARE BOUND TO HER!"

Dean's shoulders drop. He's not doing anyone any good by explaining himself because it all sounds rationalizations and excuses. He tries to speak around the ache in his throat that has nothing to do with being strangled. "I didn't know, not at first. I wasn't sure of it until the lake. Until she zapped me there. I watched her try to devour my soul and I couldn't do a damn thing to stop her, to protect myself. You know I'd somersault into a volcano before letting you go back there. I'm sick at how this all went down, that I wasn't there when you needed me." A tear slips down his cheek. "I betrayed you in the worst possible way and you have every right to hate me. But right now, I just want you to rest. Cas will take care of you if you want, but Sammy please, just go with him. I know you're in pain."

Sam chuckles but it sounds dead and despairing, like Lucifer laid waste to everything bright and good, everything he hadn't killed the first time. When he heads towards the door, Dean knows he's leaving the bunker, and that he has no right to stop him.

"Sammy," he calls after him. He stops if only to brace himself against the wall, "take the Impala."

With a snort of disgust, Sam tears out of the room. The force of his exit blows the last sign off the wall—"YOU ARE HOME" scrawled in green flutters to the floor.

 _Fin_


End file.
